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20-21 April 2001 European
Union Center
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I. Purpose of the Workshop As pundits and politicians declare the coming of a new European consciousness, scholars analyze the structures and events that shape European integration at the beginning of the new millennium. The slow advance of a common currency, reactions to the Balkan wars of the 1990s, and the realization of the effects of a body of European law have sharpened the sense that Europe stands at the threshold of a qualitatively new age of union. Yet whether the focus is on markets and national states or on debates over intergovernmental versus supranational modes of authority within the EU, scholarship has done little to comprehend what might be called the "itineraries" of European integration. By this we mean they have done little to explicate either the routes and paths individual Europeans take as they build a European community or the experiences derived and images generated from such traversals. Indeed, they have done little to explore whether the images and meanings themselves increasingly define the institutional and structural routes. In his now classic study of the formation of national communities, political scientist Benedict Anderson argues that "journeys" made by functionaries through the growing bureaucratic apparatus of absolutizing monarchies of the early modern age were secular analogues to feudal pilgrimages. These official pilgrimages, which might follow a complex series of career paths as individuals gained increasing rank in state bureaucracies, gave participants a sense of common purpose, helping them to imagine themselves as members of a nascent national community. Recent cultural theory demonstrates that Anderson’s argument may be generalized to a wider range of communities in the making. Anthropologist James Clifford argues that all cultures are "traveling cultures" insofar that their members gain a sense of common history and shared values by movement and interaction with one another and with "others," whose difference highlights connectivities with one’s own. Despite the modern nation state’s insistence on territorial boundedness and cultural-historical "roots," a sense of nationality depends on movement and displacement, voluntary and involuntary, and the constant crossing not only of territorial but also social and cultural borders. These ideas constitute the conceptual backdrop for the following proposal, which considers the European Union as a nascent community formed by a series of official and popular journeys. What career paths are followed by dedicated Eurofonctionnaires committed to being the leading edge of European unity? What business connections and labor migrations constitute the routes of European economic activity? What tourist routes and consumption patterns have evolved to make Europeans aware of their particularities? By what intellectual networks do scholars, students, artists, literati, and critics generate their representations of European identity? Above all, what images of Europe, what meanings and articulations, emerge from such itineraries? In asking these questions, the chronological focus will be on the past two decades or so, a period of more intense European integration, although more historical perspectives on the meaning and imagery of Europe since 1945 will be encouraged. Moreover, although there will be plenty of discussion of institutions and "structures," participants will be asked to consider primarily the images and meanings associated with various itineraries. The workshop will concentrate on six key itineraries of European integration. These are: Careers in the EU Labor Migrations in the EU Business Culture(s) in the EU Refugees in the EU Tourism in the EU Education Policy in the EU II. Conference Structure We envision a two-day workshop. The idea is to invite a single paper giver and discussant for each of the six areas. The paper givers will be invited from North America and Europe, while the discussants may be drawn from both Madison and non-Madison faculty. The workshop will be divided into two segments, one dealing with themes 1-3, the other with 4-6. Papers will be pre-circulated. The paper writers will not deliver their papers; rather, discussants will synopsize and critique the papers so as to stimulate discussion and debate. All participants would attend each session. In addition, the workshop will be open to all faculty, graduate students, undergraduates, and to the wider Wisconsin community. | Home
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